Building blocks for decent work for migrant farmworkers

“What makes Migrant Justice unique is that it is created by the workers themselves. The role of allies like me is to enable that space.” This is how Will Lambek responded when asked what was required for migrant farmworkers to speak out and effectively demand better working and housing conditions.

Will is co-coordinator at Migrant Justice, an organization of - largely undocumented - dairy workers in Vermont, US. With his colleague Marita Canedo, he visited the Netherlands to lobby Ahold, the Netherlands’ largest retailer, to join the Milk with Dignity Program that Migrant Justice created.

During the assembly “Migrant farmworkers’ struggles for decent work and decent housing – Netherlands and US compared” at ISS, Marita sketched the issues that migrant workers face on dairy farms in Vermont. Exempted from labour regulation in most states in the US, they face abuses ranging from long working hours, wage theft, lack of social protection and poor housing to human trafficking in extreme cases. So far, only the ice-cream producer Ben&Jerry’s has signed up to the worker-driven Milk with Dignity Program that offers an alternative model to guarantee decent working conditions to dairy workers.

Dependency on employers as well as poor working and overcrowded housing conditions also characterize the situation of farmworkers in the Netherlands.

“People are often being treated as disposable”, summarized Igor Dzigurski his experience in Dutch horticulture.

For the past three years, Igor has worked in greenhouses in Westland municipality – a global hub of greenhouse agriculture. According to him, more investment in social housing would be required, instead of migrant workers’ common dependency on their employers for both employment and accommodation. Besides, better monitoring of workers’ contracts by legal authorities, as well as the implementation of the proposed ban on zero-hour contracts would represent important improvements. Igor shared how these contracts are a major source of insecurity for workers: “With a zero-hour contract, they send you to work, somedays it’s just for one hour. If they don’t have work, then they tell you: “Don’t come tomorrow.” That’s a big problem because you do have things to pay, but you don’t know what you will earn.”

Organising workers forms the fundament

The panelists’ inputs sparked many ideas for building blocks for change that were – also literally - compiled during the assembly. Marita stressed that organising workers forms the fundament. Here, the extreme oppression that Migrant Justice’s members face - ranging from workplace abuses to the risk of being deported by the US border police – can also entail benefits for the organization: Going to a Migrant Justice meeting would often be the only time that workers can get together. Such community building may also be attractive for migrant farmworkers in the Netherlands. Igor suggested: “Maybe people would come together if you prepared dinner?” These and other suggestions offered rich food for thought for the assembly’s participants.

Carolien Lubberhuizen from the Dutch Agro-Ecology Network’s working group on Migration and Wage Labour observed: “Many of the problems in agricultural supply chains are interlinked” - with profits in these chains being made at the expense of both migrant workers, nature, and farmers. Her conclusion: “We therefore want to build a coalition for better working and living conditions of migrant workers.”

More than 50 participants ranging from migrant support organisations, agro-ecology activists and farmers via trade union members to engaged scholars and students actively participated in the assembly. The event was coorganised by the ISS research groups on Political Ecology and Civic Innovation and the Dutch Agro-Ecology Network’s working group on Migration and Wage Labour. The assembly closed with an opening of the exhibition “Picking fruit, sowing stories” that was co-curated by Carolien Lubberhuizen and Winona Boomkens.